Canine Cameo: My Dog Spot by Jack E. Levin

MY DOG SPOT IS WHITE WITH BLACK SPOTS.

He's just a dog. A middle-sized dog.

He's got a black circle around one eye and a black spot on top of his head.

So his name is SPOT. (What else?)

His ears are pointed and upright--most of the time. He barks BOW WOW when he's excited and YIP YIPS when he laughs.

HIS TAIL GOES UP WHEN HE'S HAPPY

--AND DOWN WHEN HE'S SAD.

He likes to eat and knows how to sit up and bark for his supper. He loves to chase cats and play tug-of-war with Daddy's slipper when he can get it. He likes to dig holes to bury his bones. And he loves to go for a ride in Daddy's car with his head out the window, his ears all askew.

He's just a dog. A middle-sized dog. But....

MY DOG SPOT LOVES ME.

Frank E. Levin's My Dog Spot (Aladdin Books, 2016) gives youngsters a portrait of the iconic dog in all his glory, the perfect pet every child wants. Norma Levin's illustrations bring Spot to life, executed in textured chalk on rough brown paper stock in simple childlike lines which catch the ebullient personality Spot brings to the family circle. He's just a dog, but to look at Spot is to love him. Perfect for a lap-sit read and easy enough for beginning readers to share with younger siblings, this book is the next best thing to having a dog like Spot of your own.

On the Tail of a Shaggy Dog Tale: Chick 'n' Pug Meet the Dude by Jennifer Sattler

CHICK 'N' PUG WERE AN UNSTOPPABLE TEAM. THEY SPENT MOST OF THEIR TIME LOOKING FOR EXCITING ADVENTURES AND SAVING ORDINARY CITIZENS.

At least, that's the way Chick tells it. Chick has a thing for hyperbole, and to her this somnolent  pooch is Wonder Pug, definitely a super-hero ready to spring into action to the right wrongs of the world. But Pug is no action figure. In fact, his main action appears to be finding times and places for naps, with great success.

But when a ginormous shaggy white dog makes off with their favorite toy, Squeaky Hamburger, Chick thinks it's time for some caped crusading.

"JUST LOOK AT THOSE CLAWS! AND THOSE SHARP FANGS! THE EVIL LOOK IN HIS EYES!" SAID CHICK.

"WHO IS THIS MONSTER?"

Underwhelmed, Pug opens one droopy eyelid just as the beast makes off with the toy, page right.

"THE DUDE," HE SAYS DROWSILY.

"DON'T WORRY, WONDER PUG!" CHICK BOASTS. "I WILL NOT LET THE VILLAIN ESCAPE."

Pug, on the other hand, dozes off again, only rousing himself when a nice woman offers him a treat.

"DOES MY PUGGY WUGGY WANNA NUMMY BONE?"

Chick is on her own sleuthing out the theft of Squeaky Hamburger in this one, but now Wonder Pug has a trick or two under his blankie to soothe the savage beast, in Jennifer Sattler's sequel to her 2010 hit, Chick 'n' Pug, (see review here), Chick 'n' Pug Meet the Dude (Bloomsbury, 2013). Chick, a sort of hyper-frenetic Tweetie Bird, is the real mover and shaker here;  nobody draws comic pugs like Jennifer Sattler, with her heavy-lidded pooch playing the perfect straight man to the over-caffeinated Chick. While silliness is the main order of the day, Sattler's simple premise--that good friends are sometime wildly dissimilar--comes through as loud and clear as Chick's histrionics.

Snow Pair: Quiet Bunny and the Noisy Puppy by Lisa McCue

QUIET BUNNY WOKE UP ONE MORNING TO FIND THE FOREST BLANKETED IN SNOW.

"I WISH I HAD SOMEONE TO PLAY WITH IN THE SNOW," THOUGHT QUIET BUNNY.

Quiet Bunny heads out to find someone to romp with him in the snow. But Mother Bear, with apologies, opts her boy out to begin his winter hibernation, and Bunny's mallard fans seem to have all flown south.

But snow fun is no fun without a friend to share it with, and Bunny is dejected until the silence of the snowy wood is broken by a very loud interloper:

"ARF ARF ARF ARF! GRRRRR! RRUFF! ARF!"

Quiet Bunny is in a quandary. This noisy critter is obviously friendly and wants to play in the snow with him. But he's so NOISY! What's a quiet-loving little bunny to do?

Owl has some timely wintertime advice:

FARM ANIMALS ARE DIFFERENT, BUT WE ARE ALL ANIMALS.

YOU CAN BE DIFFERENT AND STILL BE FRIENDS.

They are definitely different, but the two become winter playmates, sliding across the pond and playing tag in the snowbanks, until spring forces Puppy to go back to work on the farm and Bunny's old buddies are back and ready to join him again.

Just in time for the first big snowfalls of winter is Lisa McCue's latest, Quiet Bunny & Noisy Puppy (Sterling, 2011). McCue's story is cozy and nostalgic, recalling the "Little Golden Books" of yore, with friendships formed and adventures attempted with their cute little animal friends,but her artwork, done in full but not garish color and highly detailed skill, is a cut above those familiar stories. McCue's other books in this series are Quiet Bunny and Quiet Bunny's Many Colors.

Rebus Reader: Meet Martha (Martha Speaks) by Susan Meddaugh

Sometimes Martha surprises people.

Words can be fun. Words can also be very useful.

Words helped when Martha was in the dog shelter without her collar.

Composing one's memoirs is usually undertaken in the, um, mature years, and Susan Meddaugh's Martha certain qualifies as a mature mutt. She's just turned twenty-one if we count her, er, whelping date from her first appearance in the highly original The Witches' Supermarket as the non-talking but cat-costumed familiar of little Helen, who, dressed as a witch for Halloween, accidentally ventures into a supermarket usually patronized by real witches. The next year Martha made her debut as the logorrheic pooch who starts to talk and doesn't know when to quit in the hilarious hit, Martha Speaks, the first in a series of best-selling, full-color picture books which made her creator Susan Meddaugh famous. For a mutt who must be 147 in human years, Martha is a pretty perky pooch indeed, one who, as the star of her own weekly show on PBS, is certainly celebrating her majority in a big way in 2010!

In her just-published Martha Speaks: Meet Martha (Picture Reader) (Green Light Readers Level 1) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), Martha debuts in her first rebus reader, as she recounts the high points of her life as a picture book diva for the very youngest readers. With a picture vocabulary of 12 words or word combinations (alphabet soup, family, burger, pizza, telephone, all presented in an introduction) Martha revisits some of the high points of her career as Helen's garrulous pet--her first words ("When's dinner?"), her now forbidden telephone pizza orders ("I was going to share!"), and her unfortunate incarceration as a homeless mutt in the doggy shelter (with a plaintive "Come get me, Helen!" on the phone), not to mention her famous foiling of the unlucky home-invading burglar who tries to outwit the family's loyal guardian.

Included in the back of this "Picture Reader" are a set of sturdy punch-out flash cards with the twelve rebus pictures on one side and the matching words in large lower-case type on the opposite side, so that emergent readers can practice their vocabulary, making Martha Speaks: Meet Martha (Picture Reader) (Green Light Readers Level 1), a fun way to "play school" between classmates or between older and younger siblings or to help preschoolers learn to "read" the book along with an older reader or parent. Books for the earliest of emergent readers are an important step along the way to literacy, and as always Martha is the go-to girl when words (or dinner) are being served up.